The Seven Moral Philosophies Essay Example

greatest number of people. Both egoism and utilitarianism are concerned with consequences. However utilitarianism is concerned with people as a whole, unlike egoist who is concerned with their own consequences. There are two types of utilitarianism which are rule utlilitarians and act utilitarians. Rule utilitarians determine behavior on the basis of principles or rules. Act utilitarians look at the specific actions instead of the rules leading it (Ferrell, Fraedrich, Ferrell, 2011).

A Rule utilitarian such as a lawyer may have an important court date but may be running late. The lawyer believes it is ethically correct to arrive at the court date on time because the lawyer has a client that needs his counseling. The lawyer believes he should follow the law and but he feels it is ethical for him to make it to the court date. Act utilitarians will look at this situation and know the law but will genuinely not care and do what it takes to make the court date. The fourth philosophy is Deontology. Deontology is the ethical theory that is concerned with duties and rights.

Contrast to utilitarianism, deontology believes that there are certain things that we ethically should not do even if the outcome was to maximize effectiveness. For example a deontologist may be stuck on an island with 7 people with no food and they would rather starve to death then to turn to cannibalism because they feel it is unethical. So they would rather die than comment such an act. Deontologist also believes that people have the freedom of speech, freedom of privacy and due process. One of the champions of deontology was Immanuel Kant.

He was an excellent

philosopher who had great works in ethics, (Kraft, 2010). In comparing and contrasting, utilitarians, deontologists are both divided by rules and acts. Rule deontologist believes that conventionality to general moral ideology determines ethicalness. Act deontologist wants to use egalitarianism, justice and impartiality in decision making. Act deontologist and act utilitarians see rules only as guiding principle. Also to add, one difference between deontology and teleology is that teleologist are perceived as consequentialist as mentioned above.

Deontologists are perceived as nonconsequentialist, which is centered on respecting people. The fifth philosophy that we will break down and discuss is a Relativist. Relativist comes from the word relativism. Relativism is a theory, especially in ethics or aesthetics, which conceptions of truth and moral values are not absolute but are relative to the persons or groups holding them. A relativist for example will say who is to say what is moral or immoral? Everybody has their own opinion about what is right and wrong.

So ethics to a relativist is a matter of an individuals own feelings or opinion. The text lists three forms of relativism which are descriptive, metaethical, and normative. Descriptive relativism deals with observing different cultures and their values. Metaethical relativist believes that people see things from their own opinion and feel that you cannot solve ethical disputes between value and individuals. Lastly, normative relativist feels that one person’s ideas or opinion is equally or just as good as anyone else’s.

These three forms break down the meaning of relativism. Whereas relativism is general and the three forms descriptive, metaethical, and normative are specific in their meaning. One flaw that relativism possesses is that it focuses too much on

peoples differences and ignores people’s similarities. Virtue ethics is defined as conformity to a standard of right and a particular moral of excellence, (Merriam-Webster, 2010). This particular theory judges people by their temperament than by an action that may diverge from their normal behavior.

Virtue ethics takes a person's morals, character and enthusiasm into account when rating an unusual and unbalanced action that is considered unethical. An example of virtue ethics is when a company knowingly has bad parts and still sends them out an employee would consider this wrong. Other employees may see this employee’s passion for wanting to do the right thing but also will see it as the situation being out of their control and the other employees will just continue to go along with the unethical production of these bad parts.

This can lead to whistle blowing in comparison to a enlighten egoist but contrast an enlighten egoist due to the employee not having his self interest first but the well being of other. In the textbook it stated the difference between deontology, teleology, and virtue ethics is that deontology and teleology are applied deductively to problems. Virtue ethics on the other hand are applied inductively to problems (Ferrell, Fraedrich, Ferrell, 2010). This means that Virtue ethics draws general conclusions from specific observations. Deontology and teleology will take a general observation and make a specific conclusion.

The seventh philosophy is Justice. Justice is defined as the quality of being just; righteousness, equitableness, or moral rightness. Justice would be centered on deontological philosophies rather than teleological or utilitarian philosophies. This basically this says that in the business world justice acts to what an individual feels

is their rights and performance at in the business. There are three types of justice and they are distributive justice, procedural justice, and interactional justice. Distributive justice is centered on the results of the business rapport.

An example is if two people do the same job and one person makes more money than the other then the one who makes less has an apprehension about distributive justice. Procedural justice is based on the processes and actions that bring into being the conclusion. Interactional justice looks at the communication process in a business relationship. For example businesses lose out on money if someone calls in and a certain job cannot be done due to this individual’s absence. People can or may be fictitious about calling in sick and costing the company money. This is a case in point of interactional justice.

In conclusion, I have compared and contrasted the seven philosophies above as well as provided examples of each and defined them as well. Looking over this I have came to the conclusion, in my opinion, that we as human beings have a code of ethics we live by. Some people may live by just one of these ethical philosophies whereas the next person may try to live by several of these philosophies. They all have their strengths and weaknesses and at the end of the day it comes down to what kind of person you are as an individual and what you believe is right what is wrong.